


Ouroboros

by RookSacrifice



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Ancient Egypt, Angst, M/M, Pining, Prideshipping, Romance, Sexual Content, nothing says 'personal hell' for Kaiba like reinventing electricity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28924896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RookSacrifice/pseuds/RookSacrifice
Summary: Following the failure of his duel disk launch, Seto Kaiba, the disillusioned CEO of the military contracting megalith KaibaCorp, develops an obsession with solving a mysterious puzzle left behind by an ancient pharaoh. His desperate quest for answers will lead him to push the limits of space-time and himself.
Relationships: Atem/Kaiba Seto
Comments: 13
Kudos: 30





	Ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy the cover art, commissioned from the absolutely incomparable Mateo ([@Lord0f](https://lord0f.tumblr.com/)) who did the most stunning job imaginable ♡

  
  
It was summer again, not that Kaiba would know. The long drone of cicadas couldn't be heard from the sixty-seventh floor behind multi-pane plate glass. The sticky humidity never found it's way past the dry, recycled air conditioning systems. The morning everglow was refracted by window tint and replaced with the pedestrian mercury-vapor gas-discharge light of impersonal fluorescent lamps that hummed to life indifferent to how late or early the hour was. 

The Kaiba Corp executive suite was an impenetrable fortress, and for all it's success in keeping the world out it was equally adept at trapping things within. 

Kaiba raised his fingers over his desktop and dropped them, idly distracted by a single bulb that hummed off key, filling the room with an anxious bitonal dissonance. He tried again. He wrung out another hundred words or so, maybe in a memorandum, possibly in an email, he couldn't say for sure. 

5:24 AM

His body ached with tension so he stood up to pace, tracing a familiar path over the track of wood peeking out between the wall and the rug. He walked four brisk laps around the room, petted the waxy leaves on a fiddle-leaf fig drooping in the artificial light, then paced again. 

5:37 AM

Mokuba would arrive at six thirty. There’d be a meeting at seven. 

A 478-slide powerpoint presentation—sitting in his email, unreviewed—ahead of a bilateral US-Japan defense contract bid. A partnership with another corporation. Lockheed-Martin? Raytheon? He wouldn’t know, he hadn’t bothered to open any email other than those containing the specs for the ‘joint polar satellite system’ which was, of course, an absolute farce. A public works project, they claimed. Instrumentation monitoring terrestrial and oceanic conditions over the Pacific for the purpose of predicting extreme weather. Laughable. 

It was a remote imaging satellite for unmanned aerial combat vehicle guidance, and the unholy feed would be delivered straight to the Kaiba Corp contracted imaging analysts in a nondescript warehouse somewhere in the rural countryside of Hokkaido. After that, to the screens of the KC-T55 drone pilots. An elegant weapon of destruction that made the Northrop Grumman X-47B look like a child’s plaything.

Kaiba would know. He designed it himself. 

5:56 AM

He still had another thirty or so minutes before Mokuba’s arrival. Minutes that ought to be spent correcting the latest and greatest blunders passed up the chain from the engineering department on the drone-mounted tactical ballistic missile contract. They would be innumerable, to be sure. 

Instead, he fished the small brass key out of his pocket fit for his most private desk drawer and reverently withdrew a worn blue folder, tossing the hand-drawn schematics onto the desk. A personal project he refused to abandon. Kaiba clicked the graphite out of his drafting pencil, filling in the sharp lines of the field card platter on his second model duel disk. The first model hadn’t exactly… taken off in popularity. Of course the working class patrons of Domino couldn’t be easily coerced into shelling out 75,000¥ for a ‘card game frisbee’ and perhaps he might have known that if he listened to more of Mokuba’s long winded speeches about proper market research and securing investor capital. That had never been Kaiba’s strong suit, admittedly, but that’s what his brother was there for. More and more, Kaiba wanted to forget the world and bury himself in his designs.

The new duel disk would be cheaper. Would be the second chance they needed to rebuild Kaiba Corp. from the ground up, not as another leech of the military industrial complex, but as a games company. That had always been the intention. 

He should have known that life would never be so simple. 

It had been ten years since Gozuboro flung himself out the window at his back. Eight since the failed launch of the duel disk. Two since Mokuba graduated university and formally assumed his role as Vice President of Kaiba Corp. One since Mokuba had insisted the glass be replaced again, this time with virtually unbreakable polycarbonate riot glass. 

Just as a precaution, he assured. 

His brother made no effort to hide his concern and it stung. Kaiba _wouldn’t_ … How could Mokuba think he might? Even if he sometimes indulged in the thought absently, he didn’t have a _plan_ to, he didn’t _want_ to… Not with Mokuba around, not with another chance to launch the duel disk… 

But Mokuba was older now. He could take care of himself. Not that Kaiba had ever done a stellar job of taking care of him to begin with… He didn’t need Seto. 

Even though the next model duel disk had even less chance of success. Now that Duel Monsters was fading in popularity beside its competitors, CapMon and Dungeon Dice Monsters. Not that it had ever been a wild success to begin with… The world didn’t need another stupid card game. 

_Bzzz!_

His brother rang the door as a courtesy, but keyed into his office right after anyhow. Kaiba scrambled to shuffle the papers back into the drawer. Mokuba might share his grand ambitions, but his brother needn’t be privy to the fact he’d spent the better part of the morning pining again. 

“Hey Seto! Did you have a chance to look over the slide deck?” 

When Mokuba was younger, he’d flop himself into the chair in front of his desk, legs slung over the arms. Today, he couldn’t afford any wrinkles in his fresh-pressed Brioni. Appearances were everything, and his brother had spent the better part of the last decade clawing respect out of an old boy’s club with little faith in the words of a boy less than half their age. 

“What else would I have been doing all morning?” Kaiba rapped his fingers on the old mahogany bureau. His secretary should have been here already with his next cup of coffee. She _knew_ to bring it before his brother arrived. They didn’t like to be interrupted. 

“Okay well, I’m hoping you can handle the section on the gyroscopic navigational specs, it’s a little out of my depth and I know these yankee assholes are gonna grill us on anything they didn’t design themselves.” 

“Don’t call them that to their faces.”

“Of course not, I’ll leave that to you,” Mokuba gave a wily grin but it was as much of a warning to play nice for once as it was a joke. “Here, I wanted to show you—” 

Right on cue, Kaiba’s secretary walked in with coffee. At least she had the decency to bring two cups. 

“You’re a savior, Ito-san,” Mokuba said when he didn’t thank her. The secretary read the room and showed herself out as quickly as she came in. Kaiba couldn’t be bothered to learn her name.

Mokuba started rambling on again, talking a mile a minute about what crotchety old bastards would be seated at the negotiations today, pointedly leaving out mention of whatever war crimes they had all lobbied to commit in the name of lining their pockets. His brother was more of a realist than himself. He hated all this too, but he wasn’t the same thirteen-year-old boy anymore. He was naïve, but sharp enough to see the useful means to their intended ends. 

The company was thriving again under Mokuba’s shrewd business operations. He’d taken to it like a horse to running, paving his own path through business administration and psychology. Mokuba had an uncanny gift for rubbing elbows, manipulating leverage, exploiting arbitrage on foreign markets with their capital reserves…

All the things Kaiba had always failed at. He was proud of him. This was the world he’d sucked his brother into, and he’d made the most of it. For better or for worse. 

“Hey Seto…” Mokuba cut himself off, finally noticing Kaiba’s mind was out on a spacewalk. “You still with me?”

“Huh?” Kaiba drifted back into the office atmosphere. “I’m fine, Mokuba. The only thing you should be focused on is not letting our ‘partners’ say something idiotic on this bid.”

The air was tense for a long moment when Mokuba didn’t continue. Kaiba swallowed and opted to look out the window, eyes fixed in the distance over the Domino skyline instead of his brother’s face.

“It’s alright, bro…” Mokuba let out a stiff breath and spoke with a tone that sounded far too close to pity for his liking. “I understand sitting in these meetings gets pretty uncomfortable for you, I want you to know it’s not a big deal if you aren’t feeling up to coming. I can grab someone out of engineering bef—”

“I said I’m _fine!”_ He snapped sharper than Mokuba deserved, but he swallowed the attitude without batting an eye. 

“I’m happy to hear it,” He diffused with a bright smile, all reassurance. The comment was meant to be genuine, without a hint of sarcasm. “We’ll try to knock this one out early, okay? Let’s head down to the conference room, they catered breakfast from the place with those cream cheese pastries.”

“I’m not hungry.” Kaiba said stiffly, redoing his suit buttons as he stood up.

“Speak for yourself.”

_Click. Click. Click. Click. Click._

He knew everyone at the table could hear him fiddling with the Rubik’s cube, but it’d be a cold day in hell when he cared about the opinions of these sheep. Or maybe these were genuine wolves. It didn’t make a difference.

A representative from Northrop-Grumman’s geospatial intelligence division was going over some hollow nonsense on their ‘improved’ satellite relay speeds. How dumb did they honestly think he was not to realize it was their same tired 2005 technology repackaged with virtually no improvement? The money from their MITRE collaboration had clearly been embezzled and the resulting data transfer time delay and image quality loss would continue to be a critical issue plaguing the KC pilots’ payload strike accuracy. 

It was irrelevant that these were weapons systems. Kaiba never settled for mediocrity and imperfection.

“We’re excited to move forward with these revolutionary designs starting next quar—” 

“How much longer do you intend to abuse my patience?” Kaiba slipped the last blocks of the puzzle in place and set it on the table. Mokuba’s gaze burned with trepidation from beside him.

“I’m sorry wha-”

“Did you bother to write any new code for the compression algorithm, or did you just scramble and degenerate what the KC programmers already gave you?” Kaiba riffled through a stack of specifications outlining the logic of the code. “I wrote more coherent image processing software when I was sixteen than your entire programming team can produce with five years and a ten-million-dollar contract.”

“Kaiba-san, we assure you that no expense has be—”

“Spare me the bull!” Kaiba was incensed, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides while the large part of the table was caught so off guard by the temper flare they sat in stunned silence. 

“Seto…” Mokuba hissed in warning under his breath beside him, snaking a steady hand around his wrist. 

“How do you expect our imaging analysts to spot insurgents in the South Pacific jungle with this lossy horseshit!” Kaiba sent the papers flurrying over the table into a sea of narrowed glares. One opened his mouth to start something, but Mokuba beat him to the punch.

“You’ll have to excuse us for a moment,” Mokuba stood up from the table, refastening his suit buttons with a stoic expression that looked exasperated and far beyond his years. He nodded to his older brother, catching his wild eyes with a dark look. “If you would.”

Kaiba followed him out into an empty neighboring conference room, keeping his eyes fixed on his shoes but his hands still balled up in fists. Mokuba was calm and collected when he shut the door behind them. A foreboding omen. Kaiba stared out the window again, white knuckled and anticipating the blow. He flinched subconsciously when he saw Mokuba open his mouth out of the corner of his eye. 

“Seto,” He let out a deep sigh and spoke with that same tone from the morning, the one that stepped beyond sympathy and made Kaiba’s stomach sick. Mokuba dropped all his formal airs and sat on the table in front of him, feet bumping absently at the base of Kaiba’s chair. “Are we going to talk about this?”

“You know their pitch is garbage,” Kaiba said matter of fact, picking at the skin around his fingernails and betraying his underlying unease.

“I know,” Mokuba tried to wedge his way into his field of view. “I also know that the actual final product from this program is irrelevant and all that matters is KC stock shoots up when we win this contract bid regardless.”

Kaiba didn’t comment.

“I didn’t ask about that though. I asked about this,” Mokuba gestured vaguely to his brother, who snorted dismissively.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” He defaulted.

Mokuba sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose in a clear attempt to summon patience and passivity. A minute passed where it was clear he was hoping Kaiba might speak up but he never did.

“You know, we agreed to open up to each other more,” Mokuba offered, but the ‘we’ was a carefully chosen way of saying ‘you’ _._ “I’m not some little kid anymore. Whatever it is, I can handle it.”

Kaiba shifted in his seat and looked down at his hands, as though there might be something on his mind but he still couldn’t say it in front of his brother. 

“I’m not trying to get you to do something you don’t want to do. Hell, I hate being in there as much as you do,” Mokuba said. “I just… I know something’s wrong and I hope you’ll feel comfortable talking to me about it instead of avoiding it. I don’t think it’s healthy to keep it all bottled up inside. If you’d just talk to _someone_ it doesn’t have to be me—”

“Quit trying to psychoanalyze me!”

“I’m not!” Mokuba was good at dealing with his brother’s tantrums but even he had his limits, and Kaiba could tell he was pushing them now. Good. They needed to get back to the meeting. 

“Then drop it!”

Mokuba neglected to rise to the bait and refused to snap back. 

“You’re right. Now really isn’t the best time to talk about this,” Mokuba was adept by necessity at de-escalating the explosive moods his brother was prone to. “It’s not a problem that will get solved today.” 

He stood up from the table, clearly making a move to go back to the meeting, and Kaiba stood up to follow before he felt Mokuba’s hand on his.

“Seto...”

Kaiba could feel the tension leaking through their squeezed contact and the older tone in Mokuba’s voice. A tired one he’d only adopted since he took his post at Kaiba Corp. Kaiba hated to hear it. 

“I think you should go home.”

 _“What?”_ Kaiba hissed, snatching his hand back and recoiling, defensive. 

“You think I can’t handle the rest of this pitch?” Mokuba trapped his brother in a catch-22: either accept the ultimatum or challenge his competence—which he would never do. He only grunted with frustration in reply. “We can play a game tonight when I get home, I won’t stay late.”

“Don’t patronize me!”

“I’m not!” Mokuba finally snapped. “This isn’t just about you anymore! I can’t stand having you around when you’re like this, I can’t watch!”

“What do you mean ‘like this’? Like what? I’ve always been like this!” 

“No you weren’t! It’s like you don’t care about anything anymore!”

“I care about you!” Kaiba was glad they spared no expense installing the soundproof walls. 

“Then why don’t you act like it?” Mokuba looked dangerously close to tears and Kaiba suddenly felt guilty. “It’s like you’re not even in the room when we talk!”

“Mokuba—”

“I want you to go home,” Mokuba cut him off with a new found self-confidence he’d finally grown into like a too-big pair of shoes. He forced his voice to settle into something even but honest. “I’m not asking, I'm telling. Please. If you won’t do it for yourself then do it for me.”

“Okay,” Kaiba said with a note of defeat. “I’ll go home.” 

Mokuba hesitated for a moment on his way the door before he stopped to pull his brother in for a hug. Kaiba noticed how his head finally fit over his shoulder. He paused for a moment before hugging back. 

“I love you, bro. You know that right?”

“Yeah. I know.”

* * *

Kaiba wet his hair and coiffed it into place flat over his brow without meeting his own eyes in the mirror. He made an about face before catching sight of the blue, making a beeline for his box of cufflinks in the dressing room. 

Cubic bismuth. Small chess queens. Balmy ivory carvings. A simple steel KC.

His fingers hovered and dithered over the choices. Every moment spared for preparation would be a moment less spent at the gala.

“Setooo!” 

Mokuba’s voice carried easily through the halls of the manor since they’d had the portraits ‘moved to storage.’ Or, in other words, burned in the grand fireplace. They’d never been replaced.

“We’re already late!”

Heavy footsteps up the staircase were the only warning before his brother threw open the door without knocking. Some things never changed. 

“Just pick whatever, Isono already has the limo running out front.”

Fine. The bismuth then. The cubic motif matched the tie. 

Kaiba followed his brother out the side entrance, shuffling into the seat beside him and tuned out Mokuba’s excited babble about the rotating Domino Museum exhibits in favor of watching the streetlamps and starlight streaking past out the window. 

Kaiba swirled his martini with an absent centripetal motion, listening to the faint musings of a string quartet drifting up from their station in some first floor exhibit. Kaiba Corp had rented out the whole building for this year’s charity gala and Kaiba was loitering on the third floor above the milling bodies, watching the ants commingle from his perch high up in the rotunda. 

It was quiet here, save a few private conversations dotting the balcony but it was obvious they had as little interest in him as he had in them. A broad, vinyl banner touted the latest rotating exhibit on the top floor: ‘Journey to the Valley of the Kings.’ 

The lights were dimmed dramatically low and the curator stood guard outside, her black hair done up with thematically appropriate golden adornments at odds with her sleek black pant suit. She looked bored, but that was hardly a surprise. The guests were here to network and for the open bar. The venue was little more than an aesthetic choice. 

An unmistakable gleam of teal hair flashed in his periphery and Kaiba heard the familiar voice of Dartz carrying from behind an adjacent pillar. Uninterested in yet another self-serving parlay, Kaiba downed the rest of his drink and abandoned the cocktail glass on the balcony before ducking into the empty Egyptology exhibit. He’d rather endure the curator’s mindless babbling about long-dead pharaohs than the practiced indifference to the lives being sacrificed today. 

As expected, the exhibit was eerily vacant and without the mindless chatter of the gala for background noise, Kaiba could hear nothing more than his own footsteps clipping across the marble floor. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to hide his anxious fidgeting. He knew Dartz and company held even less interest in reading about Egyptian history than he did and were at no risk of coming inside. Kaiba busied himself with reading the golden script on a black plaque introducing the origins of the artifact collection:

_Blessings be upon him, the great Nameless Pharaoh, who causes the sun to rise and the Nile to flow!_

_Though his reign was tragically cut short and his name stricken from record, he is remembered for both great military conquest and advanced social progress. His influence ushered in a new era of prosperity for the Nile river valley following a time of great political turmoil and his rule was characterized by advances in writing, sculpture, mathematics, and architectural engineering. While much of his personal life remains an enigma, his legacy endures in the Valley of the Kings through marvelous monuments, standing tall and proud in the desert to this day._

Blah, blah, blah. The generic spiel revealed almost nothing of value, likely because they seemed to know almost nothing about the man. What were these dirt jockeys getting paid to study exactly? Why did it matter? 

Slightly more interesting was the statue beside it, presumably of the pharaoh. Another brass plaque described it as an artist’s recreation of a sandstone figure found broken and buried beneath the streets of what was once Khemet. The bone structure of the face had been painstakingly studied with 3D scans and the pigments were historically accurate artisanal mixtures produced from fluorescent spectroscopic analysis of minute paint residues. What rich bastard throws their money at this stuff? At least Kaiba had the tact to blow his on the future rather than being preoccupied with the past.

Even still, he had to admit the statue possessed a remarkably captivating and regal stoicism. The bevels of the tyrian purple cape were beautifully fluid, cascading over narrow shoulders and outstretched arms. Wrists and ears and ankles were covered in carved adornments leafed in stunning gold. The face: young, probably twenties, sculpted in a hardened expression crowned with true vermillion eyes. A fitting hue, mercury sulfide, for a gaze so deadly piercing. 

“I see you’ve met the pharaoh.”

Kaiba was abashed that the curator snuck up on him so easily, in high heels no less, when his own footsteps had been loud and heavy in the empty hall. 

“That’s one way to put it,” he scoffed, not breaking his gaze. He struggled to bring himself to look away from that face… 

“This statue is a recreat—”

“I can read the sign, thanks,” He cut off her over eager explanation. He hadn’t come in here to socialize. 

“Perhaps I can interest you in some of the pharaoh’s personal effects we’ve recently excavated,” She continued smoothly, unperturbed by his curt attitude. “We received generous funding for our dig from Industrial Illusions—”

“Don’t care,” Kaiba spun on his heels now determined to leave. The last person he wanted to hear about at a time like this was Pegasus. He made it all the way to the entrance before he caught the haughty laughter of Dartz still lingering on the balcony. He couldn’t leave without being seen. Fine. More about the Nameless Pharaoh. 

“Alright I’ll bite. Show me your little broken pottery shards,” He said. 

“We’ve unearthed a remarkable collection of intact artifacts,” The curator’s face lit up and Kaiba was drawn to her odd golden necklace with an eye motif that he’d seen repeated around the exhibit. A fitting trinket. She turned towards a glass case under a pointed spotlight and he followed her deeper into the hall.

“We may not have his name, but the pharaoh was known by many epithets. The most frequently used was ‘The King of Games.’”

Kaiba would admit his interest was piqued. What remained of the pharaoh’s personal collection was gorgeous. A tiny board game delicately hewn from a single block of faience was labeled _senet_ and touted it was the only complete game board ever recovered. There was a whole collection of quartz dice in all colors and number of sides as high as twenty. A rudimentary chess board, claimed to be the only one ever unearthed in Egypt from this era, which had sparked heated academic debate regarding the dating of the piece as it was believed the game was invented in India nearly 500 years later. 

The crown jewel of the collection, at least in Kaiba’s opinion, was the collection of gold, silver, and copper square tokens that bore precision carvings of what looked uncannily like duel monsters cards. Suddenly, he understood Pegasus’s enthusiasm for the archeological. 

“Kaiba…” The curator interrupted his train of thought with her hushed words. “Do you believe in destiny?”

“Does it matter?” He replied without looking up, still more interested in the artifacts than anything she had to say. 

“The pharaohs did. They believed that time repeats itself in a never ending circle. That the past influences the present, and the present influences the past,” She paused briefly, perhaps to jog her thoughts, perhaps for dramatic effect. “They would say it was never your choice to come here today for it was destined that the two of us would meet.”

Kaiba groaned at her sorry superstitions and feeble grasp on the laws governing the space-time continuum. 

“It’s only been a minute, but I’m already bored,” He crossed his arms to put space between them. “All that nonsense may interest you, but I didn't come here for Egyptian history 101. If there’s a point to all this let’s get to it already.”

“I think it is in your best interest to listen,” Her tone grew more serious and she frowned at his casual dismissal. 

“Really? And how do you know what’s best for me?”

“I’m familiar with your interest in Duel Monsters…” She gave a knowing smile, as though she were privy to some secret information. News flash, all of Domino was familiar with his duel disk flop. It was hardly a secret. “You may be unaware, but Duel Monsters is based on a 5000 year old game played by ancient Egyptian pharaohs. That is what Pegasus was inspired by. I suppose you could say he... fell in love with the game.”

As much as Kaiba was inclined to believe her story was true given the artifacts in the exhibit and Pegasus’s magnanimous donations to the cause, he didn’t want to wound his pride by admitting to the curator that she’d won an ounce of his attention. He continued to feign boredom. 

“We’ve uncovered stone carvings of the earliest known playing of the game in Egypt,” She picked herself up off the glass case she was leaning over and made for the last room of the hall. “I believe you’ll find it most… interesting.”

Kaiba followed her to the final exhibit and when the flood lights lit up, they illuminated a magnificent, towering stone tablet with flawlessly preserved carvings of two figures locked in an intimate battle and flanked with mythological beasts.

“These… these carvings look like… Duel Monsters cards…” Kaiba’s breath hitched in his throat. As a man of science faced with the facts, it was difficult to argue her story was false. Unless the artifacts were faked. Frankly, it brought him a faint sense of satisfaction knowing that Pegasus wasn’t creative enough to conjure the game of Duel Monsters from his own imagination and that alone was reason enough to believe. 

“It was the pharaoh’s favorite game. He was never defeated,” She gestured at the hieroglyphs for the epithet ‘King of Games’ which he recalled from the other exhibits which were repeated on the tablet as well. 

The curator gestured to another set of hieroglyphs under the other figure. “This tablet depicts the pharaoh’s greatest rival, but also his greatest friend.”

“That’s the Blue-Eyes White-Dragon…” He longed to trace his fingers down the graceful curve of her wings and tail, but knew he’d be thrown out for ‘defiling’ the piece. 

“Kaiba…” The curator stepped far too intimately into his personal space and whispered with a soft reverence. “The pharaoh’s rival is you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Kaiba snapped and jumped away from her reflexively. “I don’t believe in your bogus Egyptian fairy tales.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe. The truth does not stop being true simply because we refuse to believe in it.”

“You’re psychotic,” Kaiba balked. “The pharaoh lived 3000 years ago.”

“The hieroglyphics say that the pharaoh’s rival was a foreigner from ‘Beyond The River Where The Sun Rises’,” She gestured to more characters, as though he could read them. He couldn’t. “Do you see? Now do you believe in destiny, Kaiba?”

“Oh, fuck off! I don’t have time for this! I have a company to run,” Kaiba about-faced and started bolting for the door. “If you’re looking for money, go back to barking up Pegasus’s tree. You aren’t going to fool me with your hocus pocus horseshit!”

She cut him off before he could make his break. 

“All in good time…” Her cool demeanor never broke for an instant in the face of his explosive dramatics. She slipped him a velveteen black business card and gave another of her smug, knowing smirks before dipping out through a keyed entry door. “I look forward to our next meeting, Mr. Kaiba.” 

Embossed in golden characters was a row of hieroglyphics and beneath it: _Isis Ishtar_. He absently realized he’d never told her his name. 

* * *

It was months before Kaiba let Mokuba coax him out of his hermitage and into the public eye again, and by that time the warm weather had been exchanged for the cool temperatures he was partial to. Better suited for high collars and long sleeves. He never shared his brother’s gift for social graces and was content to let him woo the board into obedience on his own, but Mokuba stressed the importance of projecting a powerful image and making appearances and Kaiba knew he was right. High society, for thousands of years, remained a game like any other.

The sort which Kaiba had no interest in playing. He withdrew his chips from the board and skipped the last course of dinner for solitude on the patio, watching his breath puff in tiny clouds around his face. The cold was bracing after suffocating in a room full of hot air. His reprieve didn’t last long enough.

“Seto,” Mokuba finally tracked him down, grabbing his wrist in a futile attempt to corral him back inside. “You’re reputation can’t float another night of the ‘moody millionaire’ routine, alright?”

“Brooding billionaire,” Kaiba countered sarcastically, crunching the dirt of the courtyard under his feet, feeling the pokes of tiny pebbles through the leather soles. 

“I know you think you’re Bruce Wayne,” Mokuba didn’t stop pulling and Kaiba felt his shoulder wrenching in it’s socket. His brother was getting stronger. “But you’re really just behaving like a selfish asshole.”

 _“What?”_ Kaiba spat back, already incensed to be tolerating another vapid social affair at the behest of the board of directors who were unamused with his so-called ‘reclusive behavior’.

“God, when did you get so caught up in yourself!” Mokuba rarely had meltdowns since his teenage growing pains, but their dissonance had been kindling for months and tonight was the struck match on a dry afternoon. “Or were you always like this and I was too starstruck to notice?”

“I’m not going back in there, Mokuba, I’ve had enough,” Kaiba pilfered another drink off a passing waiter and downed it in one go. 

“It’s always I, I, I with you!” He was practically yelling. “What about _me,_ Seto? What am _I_ going to do? Go back in there without you? Lie for you to save face?”

“I showed up because you asked me to,” Kaiba sneered and made to storm off onto the lawn. “If I was only thinking about myself I wouldn’t have touched this dog and pony show with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole. How’s that for thinking of someone other than myself?”

“The board thinks you’re losing it!” Mokuba chased him into a gazebo dark enough to shroud their forms from view while they continued to make a scene. “You haven’t come into your office in almost six months! What am I supposed to say to them, did you even think about that?”

“So they think I’m crazy?” Kaiba scoffed. “Well I’m not, so I don’t care.”

“That’s the problem isn’t it?” Mokuba chuckled darkly. “You don’t care about anything anymore. Not the money, not your duel disk, not me, not even yourself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course I care!” Kaiba’s voice was carrying back to the party and they were starting to draw stares. He could see Mokuba glancing over his shoulder to take note of who was watching. 

“I checked the key logs. You haven’t even been in your lab in weeks…” 

“I’ve been working from home.”

“Apathy is a vice,” Mokuba quoted back at him. “Do you know who said that, Seto? You did.”

“What do you want from me!” He yelled, tall arms thrashing and whacking into a beam of the gazebo. He hissed and sucked his knuckles. 

“For you to be happy again! I want my brother back!”

“I never was happy,” Kaiba said. “I don’t think any intelligent person can be.” 

“When did everything you say get so ugly?” Mokuba said. “Aren’t you bored of it yet?”

“I’m an ugly person, and I’m not bored of the truth,” Kaiba tried to surrender himself to one of the wooden benches and settle in for another sullen evening in isolation. Everything was too loud, colorful yet insipid, for his tastes. Was it truly so much to ask for, to be left alone? It didn’t work. Mokuba hooked himself under his arm and kept him propped up on his feet. 

“I never thought so,” He started his shepherding routine again, shuffling them both down the wooden landing, and Kaiba lacked the impetus to fight it. Mokuba’s voice sounded tired again, the way it always did these days. “I know you’re still my brother, on the inside. I think you need someone to push you again, to give you a goal. You’ve always been like that. I know I’m not good at being that person...”

“This isn’t about you,” Kaiba said apologetically. 

“Then you admit there’s a ‘this’?” 

There were too many people around again for an answer and Kaiba surrendered to walking back to the party without any more fuss. 

Kaiba forced himself to absently engage the audience at the table, flashing fake smiles that never reached his eyes at the diamond-studded middle-aged socialites draped on the arms of businessmen whose names he didn’t care enough to remember. The main event of the evening, the charity auction, would be beginning any moment and as much as Kaiba despised wasting his money on artistic trinkets just to impress, he was grateful to have an excuse to avoid any more mindless table chatter. 

Kaiba busied himself with studying the program with the list of items going up for sale. An early Picasso sketch. Yawn. A Duesenberg Model J. Not quite his style. Private getaway cruise for two. Why would he need that if he already owned a private yacht? He was about to set the catalogue aside when a familiar name caught his attention.

_Presented by Isis Ishtar._

The curator from the Domino Museum. According to the short description, she was here tonight representing the museum to auction off a ‘priceless artifact’ from the Nameless Pharaoh’s effects to an interested private collector. Glistening on a velvet cushion in a glass display case was what appeared to be a shimmering, golden puzzle piece. 

A puzzle… The description was brief and didn’t provide the answer to any of his questions. Where were the other pieces? What did the pieces create when assembled? What tie did it hold to the mysterious game-loving pharaoh? It was interesting… Not enough to warrant wasting several million dollars on a useless curio fragment hwen from electrum and not even pure gold. He tossed the pamphlet back on the table.

When the sales finally began, the drama of the auctioneer thankfully absorbed the bulk of the attention in the room and despite the grating cacophony of the calling Kaiba was grateful to have all eyes in the room except his brother’s off him. 

“Thanks for coming with me,” He whispered low enough to not be overheard. “I can’t do this alone…”

“I’m a liability in most social circles,” Kaiba took another sip of champagne. 

“I don’t mean this, not really,” Mokuba said. “I mean Kaiba Corp. I don’t know how you did it all those years…”

“There is no how. You just wake up and you do. Failure isn’t an option.”

“I need you back, Seto.”

Mokuba looked like he might say something else but Kaiba was too distracted to listen to more of the same tired speech. The museum curator stepped onto the stage, hair done in thousands of tiny braids with golden baubles and a sleek black evening gown. Even if he conceded her allure, she was hardly the most beautiful item in the scene. Some inescapable gravity drew his eye to the puzzle piece, gleaming under the stage lights from within its luxurious treasure box. 

“What’s that?” Mokuba squinted, trying to make out the shape from their seat to the right of the stage. Kaiba flipped open the program and pointed to the picture. He just shrugged. “Weird. Some people blow their cash on the dumbest stuff.”

Kaiba didn’t reply. The auctioneer opened the bidding at 2.5 million and a single paddle went up over a head of sleek silver hair topping a scarlet suit from the left side of the stage. Maximillian Pegasus. Kaiba had to do a double take just to believe it. The crowd was mostly military contractors, and invitation only, which meant the gaming CEO was here by a friend of a friend for the sole purpose of purchasing the puzzle piece. 

Kaiba seethed in his seat at the mere thought of sharing oxygen with that heinous, double-crossing cretin. Eight years ago, a younger and more foolish version of himself had unwittingly approached Pegasus regarding a partnership with Industrial Illusions for the launch of his duel disk, and Pegasus had agreed. But the deal was too good to be true. Kaiba wasn’t dumb enough not to see what was happening but by then it was too late. Pegasus had deliberately orchestrated the launch failure just to turn around and offer to purchase the patents for his Solid Vision holograms and duel disk schematics for pennies on the dollar of their worth. All to re-release as an Industrial Illusions product, cutting Kaiba out of the picture. He refused to sell. 

Of course, that’s how big business operates. Kaiba knew. Kaiba Corp pulled the same stunts with smaller contracting companies, gobbling them whole for intellectual property rights. But this was personal, and Kaiba was about to make it even more personal. He raised his paddle. 

“What—” Mokuba searched the room for the other bidder and spotted the culprit, mouth twisting in amusement. “Oh. This flex is worth every penny.”

The bidding war opened. A few others interjected from around the room, but most participants were priced out within a matter of minutes and the field dwindled to a duel of two relentless peacocks. Kaiba at last caught Pegasus’s eye from across the room, narrowing his gaze in haughty satisfaction at his clear discontent as the price ceiling climbed far beyond the item’s worth. This was all very amusing, but play time was over. Kaiba raised his paddle and called out a final bid. 

“$22 million.”

Isis’ eyes grew wide with shock and murmurs filtered around the room. In excess of three times the expected price. Pegasus might be comfortably wealthy, but there was no way he had the asset liquidity to foot that bill. Even Mokuba was stunned silent, though he wasn’t in a position to argue. Pegasus shot daggers across the floor before standing from his table to dip out to the hall. 

Sold. 

* * *

Of course, when Kaiba had dropped a small fortune on petty satisfaction, he hadn’t given much thought as to what he’d do with his prize. For the price, it would be wasteful—even for him—to keep it locked away in storage. Thus, in a final afront to Pegasus’s sensibilities he’d taken to keeping the golden bagatelle as a paperweight on his desk. Even with the spotlights traded for the bleak and bureaucratic fluorescent lighting, the piece shimmered with a defiant and captivating allure from its spot opposite the crystal Blue-Eyes figurine and a photograph. He’d only ever kept two personal effects on his desk, Blue-Eyes and Mokuba. Now, he supposed, there were three. 

_Brrrr-ing! Brrrr-ing!_

Kaiba had only come back into Kaiba Corp on Mokuba’s insistence that maintaining a routine would help his non-existent ‘depression’ but that didn’t mean he had the intention of entertaining any more calls or meetings than he had from his home office. He plucked the phone off the receiver and slammed it back down without answering it. He stared vacantly at the computer screen, no open documents or emails. Just an empty desktop. 

_Brrrr-ing! Brrrr-ing!_

Kaiba ripped the line out of the wall and tossed the whole phone off the desk. It was difficult enough to focus on the mindless minimum work he had to churn out without the neurotic harassment from his squabbling flock of department directors. Let them call Mokuba. He had more patience for the chatter. 

It was too late, though. His brain used the interruption as an excuse to derail his train of thought and he couldn’t remember what he’d meant to open or work on. It was nearing noon and while he hadn’t actually started anything, Kaiba felt he deserved another break. He powered down the screen burning his eyes and leaned back in his chair to massage the tension out of his temples. He was still feeling wound tight and reached out to fidget with the puzzle.

He’d discovered upon removing it from the box that it wasn’t a single piece, but six smaller ones assembled in a fragment. The metal was cool to the touch and Kaiba ran his fingers over the delicately carved hieroglyphs covering all the faces of the shards, even those that would inevitably be hidden after assembly. He detached the pieces, leaving them on the desk, turning them over for inspection one at a time and feeling their easy weight in his hand. Then he reassembled them, each one sliding in against the next with a satisfying click. 

Toying with the puzzle was becoming a habit, just a simple pastime like solving his Rubik’s cube. This puzzle, however, was missing pieces and while Kaiba had insisted he didn’t care about the thing, leaving the puzzle unsolved frustrated him. A game left unplayed; a challenge left unanswered. He’d spent more time than he cared to admit formulating 3D renders and hypotheses as to what the finished puzzle might look like and he suspected it was a pyramid, probably composed of thirty-six pieces. Fifteen percent completion was imperfect and unsatisfactory. 

He was still too proud to call Isis and inquire how many others had been unearthed. A cursory search had confirmed at least ten more were scattered about museums and private collections, but many had been purchased by anonymous buyers and there was always a chance that others had exchanged hands long before online records were made available. The curator would know, but he wouldn’t ask. He refused to admit that his curiosity ran deeper than a passing fancy. The past could stay buried, no matter who it belonged to. 

There was sparse record to be found on the origins and nature of this _Millennium Puzzle_ as Isis had called it. Simply that it had belonged to the Nameless Pharaoh. The artifact had been among his most prized possessions, yet the pharaoh himself had been the one to shatter it. Afterwards, the pharaoh had become inconsolably distraught and insisted that the pieces be hidden away where they could never be found and the puzzle never reassembled. He passed away soon after. 

Isis had prattled on with more of her fairy tales, something about the pharaoh’s broken heart and wishes being granted if the puzzle was solved and the connection to the pharaoh’s name but none of that interested Kaiba. For all he cared, the pharaoh lost his marbles from lead poisoning or syphilitic insanity.

All Kaiba heard was ‘the nameless pharaoh’s final unsolvable game’ and all that mattered was to beat it. 

**Author's Note:**

> ♡ Please leave your thoughts in the comments, I'm always striving to improve my writing! ♡
> 
>  _Formerly known as **talladeganights**_  
>  Find me on Tumblr: [RookSacrifice](https://rooksacrifice.tumblr.com/) (main) and [atembomb](https://atembomb.tumblr.com/) (Yu-Gi-Oh!)  
> Find me on Twitter: [@RookSacrifice](https://twitter.com/RookSacrifice)  
> Roast me in the [Prideshipping Discord](https://discord.com/invite/rdqAndnaB2)


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